 This is a shorthand term for the contemporary context: the age of the missing elephant. Don Michael was first to point out the implications of a world of boundless complexity for the familiar tale of the blind men. In the traditional tale, if they could only have seen the whole they would have recognised the elephant.
No longer. In today’s world the most advanced among us know little more than one small piece of the elephant, and there are now so many different pieces, they change so rapidly and they are all so intimately related one to another, that even if we had the technology to put them all together we would still not be able to make sense of the whole.
This is a new world. It is raising fundamental questions about our competence in key areas of governance, economy, sustainability and consciousness. We are struggling as professionals and in our private lives to meet the demands it is placing on traditional models of organisation, understanding and action. We are losing our bearings. This is a conceptual emergency.
For more detail see Ten Things To Do In A Conceptual Emergency.
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